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The Thematic Apperception Test is one of the most frequently used projective tests of personality. When it was applied to these tests, the concept of projection was broadened to include not only unacceptable and repressed but also acceptable and conscious tendencies. According to Freud's definition (1900), projection consists in ascribing to others one's own unacceptable and repressed aims, desires or thoughts, and thus partially reducing the dangers into which they might lead; for it is possible to escape others, but it is impossible to escape oneself. At the same time, the projecting individual is giving spurious reality to personality traits of others which are merely a reflection of his own psychological trends.
Art products were probably the first to be treated as projections of both conscious and unconscious personality trends. Burckhardt (1855) recreated the dominant personalities and the sociopsychological atmosphere of a whole epoch, the Italian Renaissance, mainly from an analysis of this epoch's works of art. In the psychopathological field (Lewis 1928) made a systematic use of graphic arts, “an avenue of projection”, not only to unravel personality but also to further psychotherapy